You want to know what NIL has done to this sport? I will tell you exactly what it has done. Back in the 1992 season when we won that national title, you know what our players were worried about? Getting their assignments right on third down. Studying film until Coach Stallings kicked them out of the building. They were not sitting in their dorm rooms refreshing their phone waiting to see which bag man from Oregon or Texas A&M was going to slide into their DMs with a better offer. That is the difference between then and now and it is a canyon wide enough to swallow this whole sport whole.
I have watched this program for over 40 years now. I sat through the 80s when we were good but not great. I watched Coach Stallings build that 92 team brick by brick with players who committed to Alabama because of what the A stood for, not because of what some collective promised them in a sponsorship deal. Now you have kids committing to a school and three months later they are in the portal becuse somebody whispered a better number in their ear. There is no loyalty. There is no building. There is no sitting through the hard times because you believe in what you are building. It is all transactional now.
Look at what is happening around us. You have Colorado bringing in 43 transfers. You have Oklahoma State with 50 new faces under a new coach. That is not building a program. That is renting a roster for a season and hoping the glue holds. Back when Coach Bryant was here, you earned your stripes. You sat on the scout team for two years and you learned the system and you waited your turn and when you finally got on that field you knew that defense like the back of your hand. Now you have kids showing up for spring practice who do not know the fight song let alone the defensive calls.
And do not get me started on what this has done to the relationship between the coach and the player. Coach Stallings would grab you by the facemask and get in your face and you knew he cared about you because he was tough on you. Now coaches have to tiptoe around these kids because if you hurt their feelings they might enter the portal and take their NIL value somewhere else. It is soft. The whole thing is soft.
I will say this and I will stand by it. The 2026 season is going to be a circus. You have rosters turning over 40 and 50 percent every year. You have kids transferring twice three times before they ever play a meaningful snap. You have collectives bidding against each other like it is the stock market. And somewhere in all of this mess we are supposed to believe that the best team is going to emerge and win a championship? The game I grew up loving is gone. It left somewhere around the time the portal became a free agency market and nobody bothered to put the guardrails up.
You can keep your NIL money and your 43-man transfer classes and your bag men circling our silent commits like sharks. I will keep the memories of 1992 and 1979 and every season in betwe...